Revisiting Ram Gopal Varma’s Finest Film ‘Company’ As It Clocks 23 Years

Ram Gopal Varma should have stopped films after Company. Never before has a Hindi film on crime and punishment achieved such an extraordinary synthesis of violence and poetry. Never again will we get see an underworld film of such exceptional resonances that take us deep into the heart and mind of organized crime.

Company is not just a film. And yet it is a complete film. Cinema as it was always meant to be: a visual medium of conveying psycho-spiritual reality. To that extent, Ram Gopal Varma’s latest film achieves a sense of completeness of no other film by him. The characters, each portrayed with momentous authenticity and yet pitched at a level of almost-sublime articulation, convey the rich depths of lives lived on the brink, gone in a blink. And yet they’re tranquil lives, looking at their own doomed existence with detached wistfulness.

Varma doesn’t waste words or visuals. Straightaway, after a darkened subverted version of the James Bond credit titles with Urmila Matondkar doing what can only be described as ominous dance of death,   Company introduces the characters in feverish furtive flashes.

Malik(Ajay Devgan) is the silently seething gangster who immediately takes on the volatile street hoodlum Chandu (Vivek Oberoi)  under his wings.

As the whole canvas of gangsterism unrolls with striking zest and an incredibly achieved vividness of images,   the characters’ past history grows out of their body language and dialogue.  Credit must go to the awesome cast that Varma has assembled. Every actor, big or small, instinctively grasps the aggressive-yet-poetic sur of the narrative to project a richly textured canvas of immense power and passion.

But before the actors, the technicians. First, the master-conductor Ram Gopal Varma who has constantly forged new cinematic ground in all his films. With Company, he achieves a level of narrative excellence that seems impossible to equal or beat.  The sound design, the lighting of faces and frames, the exotic locations(which are used not as tantalizing visuals but authentic characters),  Sandeep Chowta’s extraordinarily expressive and assertive background music and above all, debutant cinematographer Hemant Chturvedi’s skills behind the camera come together to lend a luminous epic quality to the main text and subtle subtexts which run across this tactile tale of terrible tensions.

The characters move in a strangely exciting circle of internecine violence. The director captures the bonding and the inevitable rupture in the friendship between the gangster Malik and his favourite protégé and right-hand man Chandu through a serious of superbly crafted episodes, all illustrative and yet fluently dramatic.

 Once Varma establishes the motivations of the characters,  he moves on with telecscoped urgency. The telling of the story is razor-sharp. We are never given opportunity to get bogged down by the complex synthesis of real-life theme and lyrical treatment. Varma moves with a splendid surety of purpose. And we get sucked into his deceptively energized world of organized crime.

Some sequences such as the one at the outset where Malik shoots a traitor and his brother in a car as the more emotional and compassionate protégé watches in mute horror, or the Khallas song (where Varma weaves a whole narrative design into the titillating framework)  or  Chandu’s rooftop shootout in Mombasa (evidently inspired by Chota Rajan’s ambush in Bangkok two years ago) are so skillfully cinematic that we miss the sheer “cinema” of the situations to focus on the characters’ inner thoughts and conflicts.

 Undeniably, Varma‘s film takes both the underworld genre and mainstream Hindi cinema far beyond conventions and formulas. To a large extent, he relies on his actors to communicate the flow and glow of a sanguinary lifestyle where anything can happen in a flash.

Ajay Devgan’s all-pervasive silences are so potent they make us forget everything he has done in the past. With a twitch of an eyebrow, a faint smile at the corner of his lip, or a subtle swing of his wrist he provides exact insights into the impregnable enigma of his character, as well as the character and profile of international crime. Manisha Koirala in the minimal yet critical role of Malik’s mistress, evokes great tenderness and curiosity. We want to know more about her. But it isn’t this film’s nature to go into tangential lives. Antara Mali, who plays Chandu’s wife, surprises us in a couple of key sequences with her intuitive grasp of her character. The same is true of almost every player who gets under the skin of his or her character without scratching the sublime layer in the narrative.

 Mohanlal as the Keralite cop who treats crime as a disease is , as usual, incredibly credible. His philosophical look at crime could have easily lapsed into pulpit preaching. Mohanlal makes the cop seem so compassionately real! The only hitch is with Mohanlal’s thick South Indian accent which often obstructs the flow of his profound thoughts on the politics of crime.

But it’s Vivek Oberoi’s debut which stands out the most in the gallery of brilliant performers. To portray the journey from brashness and bullying bravado to fierce loyalty and bitter betrayal and finally arresting atonement isn’t easy for the most seasoned of actors. Vivek brings to his author-backed character a zest and thirst that nurture and nourish the part of Chandu beyond anything by a debutant. It would be no exaggeration to say that Vivek has achieved a rare blend of star quality and acting skills in his layered and complex roles. The look of tenderness that envelopes his face when he’s with his screen wife merges effortlessly with the glint of ire that burns his soul at any sign of betrayal and treachery.

Vivek’s debut is indeed an event. The same goes for almost every frame of this nearly-flawless crime drama that takes us deep into the hearts and minds of the tortured lacerated characters who live their lives on the edge. Ram Gopal Varma takes the plunge into the dark abyss without faltering for a second. Company will be recognized among the finest cinematic achievements of Indian cinema.

Vivek  Oberoi’s debut in Ram Gopal Verma’s ‘Company’ got a rapturous response from critics, and had producers lining up at his doorstep.

Vivek claimed to remain unchanged. “In my approach to family, friends, colleagues and work, I remained the same. But time and the demands on it became a problem. If earlier I returned calls within a few hours, now I have to do it within minutes or I’m accused of acting starry. When a person says, ekho badal gaya, he subconsciously refers to his own perceptions of me. I’m very sure about myself and my behaviour. So I’m not bothered. At the same time I want to avoid any friction in my working relations. So I try to reason with people who think I’ve changed. But if they persist with their mindset, I don’t lose sleep over it.”